Wrong Warp

From SpeedSouls - A Dark Souls Speedrunning Wiki

The Wrong Warp is a glitch in Dark Souls that allows you to warp to a different location than normally possible, usually to the "default", fail-safe, location of an area. There are multiple ways to wrong warp, each version is listed below.

An area can sometimes include two named regions of the game instead of only one. For example, New Londo Ruins and the Valley of Drakes are considered only one area, same for Firelink Altar and the Kiln of the First Flame, Darkroot Basin and Darkroot Garden, etc. As such, they share a single default location where the player can spawn in using this glitch. Default locations are arbitrary points set by the developers.

Purple Crystal Wrong Warp

This Wrong Warp involves using the item Purple Coward's Crystal in locations outside of the Battle of Stoicism arena in Oolacile. This is achieved via an Item Swap. The effect of the crystal is that it queues up a warp that teleports the player to the coordinates of the Battle of Stoicism entrance on the next loadscreen as long as the Oolacile map is currently loaded. If the crystal is used and before the loadscreen is triggered, another warp item such as the Darksign or a Homeward Bone is used, the two warps interfere. The game tries to warp the player to the area of the last bonfire (because that is where the player is warping to with the Darksign/Homeward Bone) but uses the coordinates of the Stoicism Entrance. Since this is not a valid position for the new area, the game resorts to using the default location of the area you were boning back to, resulting in a Wrong Warp. Note, that the area you are boning back to may not be Oolacile itself, otherwise the Stoicism entrance coordinates resolve to a valid position, resulting in no wrong warp.

Another way to achieve the wrong warp is to be in online mode and simply entering the Battle of Stoicism arena, then using the Purple Coward's Crystal and immediately afterwards using a Homeward Bone. This bypasses the need to item swap entirely. Since it requires online play though it is not allowed in any speedrun.

Battle of Stoicism Wrong Warp

For this Wrong Warp the player needs to enter a match with another player in the Battle of Stoicism PvP arena (as such, online play is required which makes it not eligible for any speedrun). Once the match has begun, the player that wants to achieve the wrong warp needs to pull off an Item Swap using an attack of his opponent in order to use a Homeward Bone, the Darksign or the Homeward miracle. This will lead to the player being warped to the default location of the area they are boning back to. This is presumably because at the start of a match in the arena, there is already the warp queued up that will teleport the player out of the arena again once the match is over. This warp is triggered once the next loadscreen appears which should normally just be at the end of a match. If a player forces another loadscreen though that queues up an additional warp, the two warps interfere and result in a Wrong Warp.

Unstable Position Wrong Warp

If the player ends up after a load screen on what is considered "unstable" ground (on which the game does not save your position), then quitting out on that unstable ground will result in the player being wrong warped to the default location of the area the player was in before the load screen. Currently this can be achieved by using the Purple Cowards Crystal Wrong Warp as described above to wrong warp to the default location of either the Tomb of the Giants or the Depths, and then quitting out. This in turn will result in the player being wrong warped again, either to the default location of the DLCDownloadable Content, which is at the bonfire before Guardian, or to the beginning of Darkroot Garden, if the player used the PCC near Hydra instead of in the DLCDownloadable Content.

Force Quit Wrong Warp

This type of Wrong Warp involves warping from an area and then making the game lose your current exact position by abusing a force quit to close the game entirely at the right moment (the way you achieve that depends on the version of the warp glitch you're doing, see the Versions section below for more details). When the game loses your exact position, it spawns you at the default location of the area you've warped from.

Since force closing the game in any way intentionally is banned in Dark Souls because of numerous issues tied to the fact that runs are timed with IGTIn-Game Time, this version of the Wrong Warp is also generally banned. Only Any% Force Quit allows this Wrong Warp as an exception. The reasoning is that this glitch is savefile manipulation using functionality outside of the game and is thus a grey area in terms of general speedrun definitions. Another issue is the possibility of undoing progress and the IGTIn-Game Time spent on the progress by simply force-closing the game during regular gameplay before the game has time to save that progress. This allows for retrying sections of the game and fixing mistakes such as dying without any real penalty, effectively turning the run into a segmented run. As a result it has no place in real-time speedruns of the game timed via IGTIn-Game Time.

Version 1

The first version only works on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms up until patch version 1.05. This version is performed by quitting the game (PSHome > Quit the game | Xbox Home > Dashboard) during the loading screen, with no specific timing. This version is also not capable of doing a warp glitch in an area if the last bonfire you rested at is in that same area.

Version 2

The second version was discovered on July 16th, 2014 by Kenny T, but it only works on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and only in online game mode which means you need to pay for an Xbox Live Gold subscription to be able to use it. It is performed by creating an Xbox Live party during the loading screen, with no specific timing. Since online mode is banned in all categories, this version may not be used for speedruns.

Version 3

The third version was discovered on September 10th, 2016 by tehderpyherpguy and works on all platforms but is much harder to do than the 2 other versions. This version is performed by quitting the game (PSHome > Quit the game | Xbox Home > Dashboard | ALT-F4) at the last frames during the loading screen.